Poor, poor, corrupt, ethically-challenged, morally bankrupt Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff). Can't even run a smear campaign without getting into trouble, screwing it up and seeing it backfire.

As we reported several weeks ago, the feckless Florida Republican launched a "Crazy Clint Curtis" smear website and blogsite, to attack his whistleblower-turned-congressional opponent with doctored photos and doctored facts.

The Tom Feeney for Congress Campaign's shameful tactics continue to fizzle, apparently, as they have been forced to remove their smear blogsite, which had been set up on blogger.com to attack Curtis. The removal of the site, and the link to it from the main smear-site, comes not a moment too soon: we had planned to run an item on Feeney's latest demonstrable lie, which we had noticed was recently posted on the smear blog. The blog, which had been at CrazyClintCurtisBlog.blogspot.com is now redirected to an innocuous search page, with no trace left behind.

In a blog item Feeney posted on the site --- before he "disappeared" it --- he charged that an article published in Hustler about the mysterious 2003 death of Raymond Lemme "was based on the delusions of Clint Curtis's murder conspiracy theory," or some such nonsense.

As it was "we," Brad Friedman, who actually wrote the article in question [PDF], we can tell you that it was based on nothing of the sort. It was based on the mysterious and still unexplained circumstances surrounding Lemme's death, which the Valdosta, GA police had initially ruled a suicide, but then later reopened the investigation after The BRAD BLOG reported on an affidavit filed by Curtis. Curtis alleged that his former employer YEI had harbored Chinese illegal aliens spying for China (later confirmed), overbilled on state contracts (later confirmed), and that Feeney, who also worked for the firm as lobbyist and attorney --- while simultaneously serving as Speaker of the Florida House --- had requested Curtis to create a software vote-rigging prototype (not yet confirmed, but similarly not disproven.)

Lemme was an investigator from the Florida Inspector General's office, looking into the charges Curtis originally filed with the state of Florida in early 2001. In his sworn affidavit, Curtis says that Lemme told him in June of 2003 that his final report was almost complete, and that he'd found the corruption "went all the way to the top." Two weeks later, Lemme was found dead in Valdosta, Georgia.

Our story on Lemme's death detailed the many contradictions between the official police report and the unearthed photographs of the death scene --- photographs which the police report originally stated were taken at the scene but unavailable, due to a "failure in the camera's flash memory cards."

And now, Feeney has scrubbed the smear blogsite altogether, in what appears to be the latest misstep in the Congressman's bizarre and shameful campaign.

Previous follies in Feeney's smear campaign include (but are not limited to):

Using hit song "Crazy", by Gnarls Barkley, without permission on the smear website. Feeney removed it after complaints from the record publisher.

Linking to a "How to Make a Tinfoil Hat" website. This prompted the owner to redirect his page --- when clicked from Feeney's smearsite --- to an ethics watchdog webpage detailing Feeney's lobbyist- and foreign agent-funded vacations in violation of Congressional ethics rules. (Feeney is the only, as-yet-unindicted Congressman remaining in the House to have traveled with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff to a posh golf resort in Scotland.) Feeney removed the link a day or two later.

Failing to include "Paid for by Tom Feeney" on the smear blogsite. He recently added the disclaimer after a complaint was filed with authorities.

A smear campaign mailing featuring doctored photos of Curtis and a Hustler magazine cover, sent by Feeney to more than 100,000 voters. A local mom was angered at having to explain the "smut" campaign literature to her 9 year old son, who picked up the mail. Local news stations covered the misstep.

All of this from a man who issued a news release in the early morning hours after Curtis's landslide victory in the Florida primary. Quoth Feeney: "Serious times demand serious leaders and Curtis is not even in the same solar system as the rest of us."

Really? Which solar system are you in, Mr. Feeney? We're still waiting for your "serious" leadership, or at least a serious campaign on both the issues and allegations.

For his part, Curtis recently issued a press release calling on Feeney to explain what he knew of Florida colleague Mark Foley's sexual predator issues and when he knew about them. As a GOP Deputy Whip in the U.S. House, Feeney is a part of the Leadership who had been reportedly made aware of Foley's predilections long before the information was publicly revealed.

So far, Feeney has refused to comment on the record, to our knowledge, concerning the Foley matter.

He has also refused to take a polygraph test concerning Curtis's allegations and has denied, but not answered to, them. Curtis, who gave an account of the remarkable story in video-taped sworn testimony to a Congressional panel in late 2004, successfully passed such a polygraph on his own in early 2005.

{ed note: Comment deleted. Aside from personal attacks on other commenters, this poster has also commented under different names including "Liberals Are Stupid" and "Paco Rivera" Why "conservatives" feel they don't have to follow rules is beyond me. - BF}

#2
What concerns me more? A Radio station filling for help or Criminals in the White house and Republican government pilfering our treasury and turning America into some dictatorship. Hmmm let’s see. Yep, those criminals are much more important to me than a radio station getting help, but I see how much your mind has evolved since you were born. Aye?

Hey, Hannity Rules! I don't even listen to Air America Radio, who cares anyway? Do you hear us, here, talking about Air America radio a lot??? WTF does that have to do with Ney resigning and Feeney commissioning a vote hacking program??? Feeney: the pioneer of electronic vote fraud software!!!

Hannity is a big, fat liar. Air America claiming bankruptcy doesn't change Hannity, Limbaugh, and O'Reilly being big fat liars. In fact, I hope Hannity, Limbaugh, and O'Reilly use all of their airtime talking about Air America claiming bankruptcy, so WE CAN TALK ABOUT VOTE FRAUD WITH OUR TIME!!!!!!!!! Air America claiming bankruptcy HELPS US, because Hannity, Limbaugh, and O'Reilly will be talking about that from now until the elections, instead of smearing Dem candidates........

With the stock market breaking records, gas prices dropping like a rock, unemployment lowest in 40 years, federal tax receipts at a record high (due to Bush's tax cuts) ... the GOP IS A STONE COLD LOCK.

The stock market is breaking records, and studies show that ONLY THE RICHEST ELITES are benefitting, not workers. Workers are not sharing in the "booming economy", only the rich. Workers wages have remained stagnant for years, DESPITE a booming stock market.

What is funny is that the GOP ownes DIEBOLD, so you stupid liberals DON'T have a change in the mid-terms.

lol...

HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES?

PS > You liberals liberals should be rounded up and put in a re-education camp. One that has the collars around your neck like the movie Running Man. If you leave the perimeriter then your head will explode.

# 6
It's another ENRON STUPID!!!! Wait until after the election you'll be paying over 3.00$ a gallon again. Are you that STUPID. So the Republicans just had us paying those high gas prices in-between elections. Do they count the people who are not eligible for unemployment???? NO they don't. Federal tax receipts high for WHO? Not the middle class. Come on pull your head out your ass.

You can't invest in the stock market if your fucking wages have been stagnant!

I have a thought with the "whacky Republicans"...we have all of these resignations, evangelical hucksters with fake leper colonies (hastert), gay pedofile scandals...etc...

My prediction? What's the one thing the Republicans haven't brought up yet? Ready???

ALIENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm waiting for some whacko Republican to say he's been abducted by aliens, or the Democrats are aliens...or SOMETHING ABOUT ALIENS!!! It's the only thing these GOP whack-jobs haven't been in the news for lately!!!!!!!!!!!!

{ed note: Comment deleted. Aside from personal attacks on other commenters, this poster has also commented under different names including "Liberals Are Stupid" and "Paco Rivera" Why "conservatives" feel they don't have to follow rules is beyond me. - BF}

It's a wonder to me that folks like Hannity Drools are really so short-sighted and yet so self-aggrandizing. They continue to vote against their own best long-term economic interests, and seem so willfully blind to the long-term effects of the policies they advocate --

for example, the Paris Hilton tax cut, also known as the permanent repeal of the estate tax:

In a little-noticed estimate confirmed by his office yesterday, Stephen Goss, the highly respected Social Security actuary, has studied how much of the Social Security financing gap could be filled by a reformed estate tax. What would happen if, instead of repealing the tax, Congress left it in place at a 45 percent rate, and only on fortunes that exceeded $3.5 million --- which would be $7 million for couples. That, by the way, is well below where the estate tax stood when President Bush took office and would eliminate more than 99 percent of estates from the tax. It reflects the substantial reduction that would take effect in 2009 under Bush's tax plan.

According to Goss, a tax at that level would cover one-quarter of the 75-year Social Security shortfall. The Congressional Budget Office has a more modest estimate of the shortfall. Applying Goss's numbers means that if CBO is right, the reformed estate tax would cover one-half of the Social Security shortfall.

Or maybe it's that typical repug attitude that we see so much - the smug "I've got mine, so all's well in the world" instead of noticing that the economic train is leaving them (and everyone else who makes less than $1mil a year) behind, their repug leaders have zero loyalty to anyone but themselves, and in fact their repug leaders distract them wtih so-called "values" issues while they enrich themselves with corrupt deals under the table and behind closed doors.

Take Feeney, for example (Please!) --- among many other shenanigans, he is pushing repeal of portions of the Sarbanes Oxley Act that protects whistleblowers from retaliation for exposing corporate wrongdoing. We already know that Bush has removed protections for whistleblowers at the EPA and other government entities, and is trying to prosecute journalists for exposing criminals in our government.

Sarbanes Oxley was created in response to the Enron, Worldcom, et al, debacle. It provides protections for individual investors from predatory and criminal accounting practices when they invest in the stock market. Small businesses are already exempt from the cost burden of implementing the new accounting standards that, had they been in place, would have exposed the Enron et al. corruption before it collapsed the stock market, but Feeney wants help big companies be exempt from the requirements, too. He thinks that we are past all that --- he is banking (literally) that we have forgotten what happened to the retirement assets of millions of people. Michael Milliken would be proud.

And now Feeney wants to gut those few protections AND privatize Social Security, and forcing individuals to invest in private retirements acounts in a stock market where he is systematiclly dismantling protections on behalf of Big Business!

I don't get it. Where is the logic in trading short-term personal gain for the long-term well-being of the vast majority of Americans?

Maybe Hannity Drools can explain that to me.

It's the same ol' same ol', and I don't know that I will ever understand it --

{ed note: Comment deleted. Aside from personal attacks on other commenters, this poster has also commented under different names including "Liberals Are Stupid" and "Paco Rivera" Why "conservatives" feel they don't have to follow rules is beyond me. - BF}

Oh, look, Hannity Drools is trying to get liberals to suffer (how sweet). And yet we stubbornly refuse to. And we rudely persist in talking about real issues with real impact on the vast majority of Americans.

I'm kind of sad Feeney has removed the site cause it was actually a big help to Clint Curtis I think. The tinfoil hat's sit and fit much better on those who claim we should be wearing them. Anti-democracy activists look best in these hats. Anne Coulter would really suit one.

OTDES #18 "They continue to vote against their own best long-term economic interests, and seem so willfully blind to the long-term effects of the policies they advocate –"

The right wing are ripping the base out of the world economy. Western wealth has increased in a large part because of wages that have allowed more people to buy and contribute to the economy. Everyone wants to sell in the richer democratic countries where people can buy. The unions have generally speaking made the western worker better off and therefore we get the trickle up effect of a much bigger market to buy a much wider range of goods. This contribution brings inflation and competition, however with increasing mechanisation of prodution, new efficient energy sources and recyling, the inflaltion problem due to increased demand and shortages could become much less as long as we dont get a population explosion due to outdated family planning policies and the accompanying impoverishment that this will bring to many. Impoverishment will trickle up take my word for it. This is another reason workers can buy your products because they can limit family size which enables many women to work therefore increasing the economy and living standards for everyone. These factors are a large part of what separate the western world from the third world which is where the right wing are unwittingly taking us. I am no expert but the general pattern is obvious to me.

hannty rules displays the same type of misdirection so commonly found with faux news and rush limbaugh.

Confrontation by misdirection.

The facade of moral superiority is quickly falling off of the GOP. So many will be implicated in in the Abramoff crap, and the Foly coverup, then, once the collusion between corporate entities and voting fraud are mad epublic, the GoP will never ever be trusted again.

The ravings of "hannityrules" are nothing but the desperate rantings of a scared and fearful mouthpiece who desperately needs to keep the cashflow going, and knows the only way to do that is to engage in the same old misdirection that has worked in the past.

Unfortunately for them, it is no longer working.

We see through your facade, we could care less about air america, we care more about 1 person, 1 vote.
And you may get away with the murder of Ray Lemme, but you cannot murder all of us.

Your time has drawn to a close, I look forward to watching you and yours rot in prison. Such will be your reward for the corruption and the lies and the deaths you perpetuate.

HANNITY DROOLS was foaming at the mouth because he just heard 3 hours of his hero "The Rush",.. his blood pressure was just off the charts.

One bankruptcy,.. egregious Moral Bankruptcy and Depravity he failed to mention,.. these Republiconvict Perverts,.. here is a cesspool and toilet that keeps backing up,.. endlessly,..

Snip:

October 13/14/15 --- There is renewed attention on a controversial congressional junket Dennis Hastert led to Myanmar (Burma) in 1996. Hastert, then-Texas Rep. Tom DeLay, then-New York Rep. Bill Paxon, and Rep. Deborah Pryce visited a UNOCAL pipeline in Myanmar as guests of the Myanmar government. Myanmar was then governed and continues to be governed by a ruthless military dictatorship. The trip by Hastert and his GOP colleagues was funded by the Asia-Pacific Exchange Foundation, an entity partly funded by UNOCAL. The oil company also contributed to Hastert's political campaign. Hastert met with Burma's most hard-line generals but not with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Hastert and his delegation was afforded all the trappings of a state visit by the Burmese junta, a regime whose intelligence service is known to use child prostitutes to entrap foreign diplomats and leaders. Hastert also visited Bangkok in January 2002. Paxon, Hastert's Myanmar traveling mate, resigned suddenly from his House seat on Feb. 25, 1998. He was succeeded by Tom Reynolds, who is now embroiled in the Pagegate scandal.

The situation at the US Embassy in Bangkok was so bad, a newly-arrived Deputy Chief of Mission wondered why barely legal-aged male staffers at one of the official State Department residences would line up at the foot of stairs before he went to bed. He later realized that they were waiting to see which one he would take to bed. One U.S. diplomat regularly traveled with two young boys he procured in Vientiane, Laos and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. When he took the boys on an assignment to Bandar Seri Begawan, he was declared persona non grata by the Brunei government because homosexuality is illegal in the Muslim monarchy. The U.S. embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia is another posting that tolerates its diplomats having sex with underage male prostitutes.

It is clear that Pagegate is just the tip of the iceberg. The scandal has tentacles that reach into the Senate, the Oval Office of the White House, the State Department, and U.S. embassies throughout Southeast Asia. Only a clean sweep of the GOP leadership in Congress will shed light on what could be a pedophilia scandal on the level of that experienced by the Catholic Church.

Thanks Old Turk. In order to be truly trusted in elite republican circles, you have to like young boys. Their loyalty to each other will bring them down.As well as Karma...the military and CIA who have been treated shabbily by bushco.The FBI ain't lookin' so hot these days either. Wonder what our country will be like after the Great Cleansing? After all, our youth was marked by killing Native Americans and stealing their land...Have we changed? I actually think that if we had fair elections and media, none of these perverts would be in power. We need more women,(not Hillary) blacks and Native Americans in power to change. I'm so tired of seeing rich, white middle aged men controlling everything. In the run up to the Iraq war, only blacks were speaking out. Tavis Smiley had Hugo Chavez on his show for a half hour...and was very respectful.

I just got home from work, and had a message that an application for an absentee ballot is being sent to my house, saying "please fill out your card to make sure your vote counts...make the Republicans accountable"...well, that tells me, Democrats in Pa. are getting wise to electronic voting machines. There has been so much progress on this front, I'm very happy about this. Things are really moving more than I would have predicted, say, 6 months ago.

My question for the weekend: The tide seems to be turning to get the Republican crooks out of office and stop one-party rule, and therefore have more accountability in our government on the federal level. The question: Will there be enough fraud to offset the true will of the voters???

Mark Crispin Miller said that Kerry didn't just win, but he won by a lot. By 5 million popular votes. Final tally on "the machines"? Bush by 3 million. 8 million vote swing. Are there enough people now, keeping this in the news and keeping an eye on this??? This time???

We know what's going on, and we know what WENT on in the last few elections. We screamed about the hard statistics, the impossibility of what happened.

Before THIS election, a tide has turned with more people aware of electronic vote machines fraud, both in the news and in the general public. Will it make a difference??? Are all of our eyes on this? This time? Ahead of time???

The RNC caging list ain't gettin any smaller, that's for certain. If they publically state that they have a 'voter vault' data mining operation that targets likely republican voters to get out the vote on election day, you can be damn sure they have an equal sized operation to disenfranchise those not likely to vote republican. All of this innuendo about Diebold flipping votes, although necessary, takes the spotlight away from these oldschool disenfranchise tactics gone high-tech. I for one have little faith in the "army of lawyers" the democrats think will rush in to battle.

I live here in Feeney's district and I thank God for Brad Blog!!! The "Feeney-ites" are out in mass here in Florida's 24th District. I am sending out the link to Brad's stories on Feeney to everyone I know and asking them to forward as well. It's the only way I know to get the word out. Feeney is everywhere over here. He's running TV spots it seems every few minutes, he's on talk radio, his propoganda is in the mail,, etc.,etc. My neighbor is a Republican and she saves copies of the mailers for me so I know for a fact that they are arriving every 2 or 3 days! If I didn't have this site to calm my nerves I don't think I could make it through. So far I've got commitments of over $4,000 from local contributions. I am supposed to pick them up this weekend and I'll get them to Clint! Maybe...just maybe it will be enough to help get Clint's name out. I've been involved in politics long enough to know that name recognition is everything and we need to help get Clint's name out!!! On election night I am going to sit down at 7:00 PM with a bottle of wine and either celebrate or drown my miseries along with the death of democracy!

I'll bet this "scrubbing" has to do with the recent news of an Internet Defamation case, where a woman was just awarded $11.3 million.

This case was played out in Florida, to boot. A little too close for comfort, eh Feeney?

If there's any justice in this world, this would mean that Curtis should be able to win a ruling of several HUNDRED millions of dollars from Feeney and his minions who have been spreading all of the "crazy Curtis, tinfoil hat, etc, etc" lies.

"A Broward County, Fla., jury has awarded a woman $11.3 million in an Internet defamation lawsuit that legal experts say could spur more courtroom battles over what's said online."

I should add that, if Feeney is currently morally bankrupt, then if there's any justice he will soon be economically bankrupt as well, once Curtis' lawyers get through with all the defamation suits that Curtis should be filing against him.

I'm going to miss that site. I rather enjoyed posting my comments there... I loved being able to post where I knew the Feeney campaign would be reading my comments. Oh well, writing the daily smackdowns I was posting there were beginning to get a little tiresome. Probably because it was sooo easy.

Well now, isn't this interesting. Gerry Studds, the gay congressman who nobody had probably heard about until the Foley page scandal brought him back into the limelight due to HIS scandal of the early 80's is suddenly dead at 69 from a blood clot. The page he was involved with stood in support of him while he was being condemned and Studds was reelected many times after the incident.

My mission tomorrow is to get to the bottom of this "debate" scenario. Forgive me if I don't "get it" but Feeney CLEARLY said he'll debate if the subject is vote fraud, conspiracy, intimidation, etc. Is this not what we wanted??? I am tired of being between the two campaigns. Clint's people say that Feeney has refused to debate and Feeney's people say they WILL debate and I've seen the letter. I guess I'll have to pick up a copy of the letter and personally deliver it to Clint's people because something isn't passing the smell test here. Why on EARTH would Clint's people tell me that they have a letter from Feeney refusing to debate if it's not true???? I'm beginning to think that Feeney is so nefarious that he'd hand out one letter to his supporters and another to Clint just to confuse the two parties until the election is over in 3 weeks!

Since it's near election time, let's revisit the stolen Schmidt/Hackett election...

...an excerpt.........

*************************************************

The humidity crisis.

Then it happened: the “humidity” crisis. For pure drama, it could not have occurred at a more dramatic point in the vote tabulation. Of Clermont County’s 191 precincts, 100 had been counted. Then the Board of Elections announced that excessive humidity had caused ballots to swell, making them difficult to count. As a result, there would be a delay in the count. At this point, the election was dead even statistically, at 50% for each candidate. The 91 precincts in Clermont represented about 12% of the remaining vote. When the crisis was resolved, the 50-50% tie changed into a 52% to 48% victory for Schmidt.

***********************************************

Big Dan says: "Schmidt stole an election from an Iraq War vet...then went on to call Iraq War vet Murtha (from my home state Pa.) a "coward"...

(...MORE excerpt of some "UNASKED QUESTIONS" by the corporate MSM......)

The sudden stoppage of vote tabulation in Clermont was reminiscent of nearby Warren County’s Board of Elections citizen-media lockout during vote counting in 2004, which county officials claimed to be the result of a Homeland Security alert. There was no alert.

Was humidity the reason the optical scanning machine count stopped in Clermont, or was there some “intelligent design?” Humidity can impact the ability of optical scan counting machines to process paper ballots. It is not frequently reported and there are clear instructions providing easy remedies (e.g. air condition polling and tabulation facilities). The state of Louisiana made its 2003 RFP for voting machines contingent on tolerating a 98% humidity rate, for example. Air conditioning is reported to be widely available in Clermont County, as are dehumidifiers.

Why were 91 precincts impacted while 100 others were not in the same County?

Was there a one-to-one match between precincts with “humidified” ballots and precincts without air conditioning?

If so, why were nearly half of the precincts exposed to humidification? And if this is not so, if some of the 91 precincts with ballot problems due to humidity had air conditioning and some did not, how does the Board explain humidity problems in precincts with air conditioning?

Was Clermont the only part of the 2nd District that was affected by humidity that day and if so, why?

Why did the Board of Elections allow precincts to operate that lacked sufficient air conditioning to prevent humidity?

Will it be more of the same this time? A bunch of 51%-49% GOP victories (or 52/48) with questionable surrounding circumstances? Has a Democrat ever won 51%-49% with a terror alert or "fake humidity crisis"???

Well, well, well...I'm not sure what to think. I showed up without notice at the "Yang Building" and walked right into Feeney's campaign office. I spoke directly to a Mr. Teaman. I told him that I wanted to know why Curtis's campaign was saying they would not debate when the Feeney campaign said they would. It took a few minutes but he printed off a letter that they claim is the ONLY letter they have sent on this issue. Either I am totally brain dead or something is missing in the mix but they even showed me the signed "return receipt requested" from Clint Curtis showing they received it. The letter says they WILL debate and they WILL discuss the allegations that Clint has made. Tomorrow I am going to Office Depot, make several copies and hand delivering it to our local media outlets. It is up to them to clear this up....I refuse to believe that the same letter that Feeney is putting out is the one that Clint has because they tell me that Feeney put it in writing that he refuses to debate!!!